the amazing vanishing blogger
dear both of my regular readers:
Perhaps you've wondered why my irregular postings - tales from the low-rent library and information literacy trenches, tangential rants, liberally sprinkled with snarkasm and the occasional unveiling of brutal honesty - have become even less irregular, i.e. nonexistent. Or maybe you just know that I'm a moody beastard who sometimes just doesn't feel like writing in a semi-public space.
In this case it's a mix of the latter plus some other pursuits taking much of my time. This term I have a full course load at Missspeled College, and have been beating my head against various idiot walls at the Community College of the Damned - internal politics, a slew of one-off info literacy classes that had little hope of lasting efficacy, a long-running contract dispute in which I foolishly became more involved, departmental politics, and being outrightly rejected and even insulted for a full time position for which I was eminently qualified - ideal, even - and not even offered a token interview. I am actively job hunting, which is a rickety rollercoaster of hopes and posturing and earnest attempts and too many shattering rejections or just plain being ignored.
At the same time, I am working on a textbook for information literacy, not such a radical notion if you're familiar with the field and the literature - but radickal as all Gehenna in that I:
refuse to use the term "Information Literacy" anywhere in the text or the budding book's general description, and
intend to distribute the finished work in e-book format at absolutely no cost whatsoever.
That's right, muddafuggas: I'm gong off the rez and giving it away for free. Okay, I'll have a PayPal donation link, but the day I release it the only gatekeepers will be a Creative Commons license and the limits of your bandwidth.
I do not expect this book to cause much more than a minor splash in the small ponds of academia or libraries. At least not at first. But for years I have been advocating not just for my field but within it, repeating until I'm red in the face (which doesn't take much if I'm doing it right) that we librarians, archivists, keepers and organizers and disseminators of knowledge - we need to not merely adapt to changing technologies and social shifts but to jump on them early and lead, master them as they emerge and ride 'em like the gnarly waves they are, minus the saltwater up the nose (hopefully). Hear the first splash and watch the ripples.
A big part of this has been confronting the habit of accepting our roles as handmaids to the processes and institutions of learning, complaining yet not acting when our funding is again cut and our services diminished as trivial. In staff meetings and professional fora we go on about the importance of that Info Literacy notion - really, without ever defining it for the layperson, leaving them confused by our jargon - yet rarely stepping up and loudly demonstrating that what we do in educating individuals of all ages and levels in the ways of asking better questions and empowering them to find their own way through the delightful and frustrating mess of the infosphere - all of that is not only valuable but essential.
Misssplledd Colege has been a leader in pushing IL as an integral part of its curriculum, which is one reason I stay there (that, and no one else will hire my difficult ass just yet). For the last 2 years the course I teach has been a rarity in academia: a mandatory 3-credit course in information research and communication, for the last year with an intensive writing component. As frustrating as it can be, as many blank stares from disinterested teenagers and twentynothings as I routinely encounter when asking a question in class, as many 8th grade level paragraphs I see in college level papers - I keep at it. It matters. For me it is an act and a process connected to my own passion, and it is one I won't back away from without a lovely fight. (And as I've been reminded, this is such a typical Scorpio behavior. Just fucking deal with it.)
I'm also disgustingly happy of late, for various reasons, all of which are valid and good and yummy like you would not believe. The textbook isn't my only writing project - this Spring I hope to have a poetry collection finally (!) put together and unleashed upon an unwitting world - and yes, I've been saying that for years, decades even, but seemingly impassable passages have suddenly cleared themselves up and I am about 80% of the way to that unquantifiable goal of There, so - well, believe it when you see it, but look for it in June. I am also slowly working on a children's book with my daughter (co-author and illustrator), which will go slowly or even slower than that, but I'll take it at her (geological) pace rather than my own (glacial).
So, yeah, I've been busy, so you're not rid of me yet. HA! You so lucky.